You Are Here

Closing

Description of Activity

Gather participants in a circle.

Pragmatics:

Ask participants to please print and bring some images of their point of view "walk" for next time. Perhaps they can make the prints during this session.

Obtain youths' permission to save the sketches. Make sure each sketch has the artist's name on the back. Assure youth that the sketches may be used only with their permission in the "Meet the Creators" portion of the final display.

Confirm and/or arrange youth co-leaders for next session (optional).

Invite participants to share one word that describes an aspect of the congregation. Have a volunteer list the words on newsprint. Ask if anyone would be willing to take the list and create a chalice-lighting opening for the next session. If no one volunteers, simply move on. Invite the youth who is recording the words to read . . them aloud, starting with the opening, "Our congregation is . . ."

Invite participants to reflect on what went well during this session and what did not.

Close with a blessing or a simple word of thanks to participants. Alternatively, read this passage from The Unitarian Universalist PocketGuide, by Kay Montgomery:

I invented Unitarian Universalism. All by myself. I know numerous other people who have done this as well. . . . I stumbled on a passage in a book that described Unitarian Universalism. I was astonished: This thing that I had invented actually existed-a richer version than mine, a version with religious, intellectual, and cultural traditions I couldn't have imagined, but still, identifiably mine. And then there was the experience so many of us have had-of coming home. Of showing up in this congregation and finding comfort and challenge and people who insisted I grow . . . .